Video Player

Weapons of Mass Confusion: Assessing the True Risks

Moderator: Dr. Kosta Tsipis
Owen Coté Jr. PhD '96 Jeanne Guillermin Steven Miller Philip Morrison: October 30, 2003; Running Time: 2:01:35

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Panelists gathered for this discussion agree that when setting weapons policy it is counterproductive to lump weapons together. The dangers from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons need to understood individually. Owen Cote says nuclear weapons, with their large-scale production process and instant lethal capacity, belong in one category, and biological and chemical weapons – easy to fabricate but difficult to manipulate – belong in another. Cote recommends securing Cold War nuclear stockpiles, and isn’t sanguine about “running down” biological or chemical agents. Jeanne Guillemin describes the historic taboo against the use of biological weapons. Although military strategists realized early on they could not “target clouds of microbes,” the Cold War enabled significant programs for agents like anthrax and tularemia. While there is a threat from such weapons, Guillemin believes their “fright value” is behind billions in homeland security programs that constitute “a tremendous distraction from more central issues.”

Steven Miller details a sea change in national policy under the Bush Administration, away from arms control and toward unilateral offense and defense, based on the argument that “we face a gaggle of rogue states and terrorists” who cannot be threatened in a retaliatory way. Miller says we’re already getting mixed results pursuing this policy – Saddam’s gone, but North Korea represents a dangerous situation. Philip Morrison calls for a return to deterrence.

Lecture Details

Location: 3-270

About the Speakers

Moderator: Dr. Kosta Tsipis

Research Scientist, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Owen Coté Jr. PhD '96

Associate Director, MIT Securities Studies Program Co-Editor of International Security

Prior to joining MIT's Security Studies Program in 1997, Owen R. Coté, Jr. was Assistant Director of the International Security Program at Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs. He received his Ph.D. from MIT, where he specialized in U.S. defense policy and international security affairs. He is the author of The Third Battle: Innovation in the U.S. Navy's Silent Cold War Struggle with Soviet Submarines, a book analyzing the sources of the U.S. Navy's success in its Cold War antisubmarine warfare effort, and a co-author of Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material.

Coté has also worked at the Hudson Institute and the Center for Naval Analyses.

Jeanne Guillermin

Senior Fellow, MIT Security Studies Program Professor of Sociology, Boston College

Steven Miller

Director of the International Studies Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University

Philip Morrison

Institute Professor and Professor of Physics, Emeritus, MIT

Philip Morrison has been at MIT for 40 years (Institute Professor; Physics, Emeritus). A distinguished theoretical astrophysicist, he worked on the Manhattan Project and since then has spoken out widely against the use of nuclear weapons.
Morrison died in April 2005.